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Massachusetts Solidarity Rally for Wisconsin Unions (video)

The crowd chanted "They say cut back, We say fight back" before the speakers came to the podium.

Congressman Ed Markey addressed the crowd to remind them what caused the financial crisis (and it wasn't public public sector workers.) Next, Congressman Mike Capuano announced, "I am a cheesehead" to communicate his solidarity with the working people of Wisconsin fighting for the right to bargain collectively for wages, benefits and work conditions. Mike foretold of similar attacks on worker rights by Republicans soon to come in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He said it was a fight for the middle class.

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The video autostarts at 9:45. You can restart anywhere.

Once again, American labor is leading the way and awakening a broader movement of democratic activism, an activism that is in direct opposition of the memes broadcast in the main stream media and the right-wing noise machine. To wit, the meme about the lazy, lavishly paid, public sector worker.

Republicans like to divide us between union and non-union, public and private. They like to get everyone pissed off at the public sector worker so they conflate two issues, the cause of the Great Recession and public worker benefits packages. It's a false equivalency.

For the record, I think its fine to ask all members of society to share the burden of an economic crises but it's dead wrong to blame public sector workers for the economic crisis when they didn't cause it and its wrong to use the crisis as a cudgel to bash them.

So what does it mean to share the burden? For starters, let's not give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts they don't need and don't want. To be clear, I blame Obama and the Republicans for doing this. Three percent of all income over $250,000 would go a long way to addressing the fiscal crisis. In fact, George W Bush tax cuts are a significant reason we find ourselves in a mountain of debt. Add to that, two wars on the national credit card and Medicare Part D and its easy to see why the Clinton budget surplus vanished like a fart in the wind.

$80 trillion is the amount of middle class wealth that vanished in the housing bubble collapse. Why aren't the banksters gong to jail?

Let's be clear, state budgets are in trouble because of the Great Recession and the huge gap in tax receipts that resulted from the unemployment, not becuase public sector workers have lavish pay and benefits. Fox and other right wing noise machines have been beating that drum for two years, and they still are.

It's true, public workers have benefits packages better than many companies but that is because they made deals in which they conceded pay raises for better benefits. These are agreements aka contracts. It seems public sector unions are ready to concede some of their wages or benefits in order to share the burden. Are the richest people in our society ready to also?

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Comments

Deval Patrick also spoke at the rally. Watch.

He said,“We don’t need to attack public sector workers to make change for people of the Commonwealth.”

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The preceding message was brought to you by the AFL-CIO and the Democratic National Committee!

I haven't read such a line of propaganda since the Soviet Union crumbled...

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Are you saying public sector workers caused the state's fiscal crisis? What are you saying?

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read the OP. He/she uses every stale- and erroneous- canard and Big Layba/DNC talking point, including the utterly asinine, but totally predictable, blaming of George W. Bush.

Talk about blanket criticism...

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W was handed a balanced budget with a surplus, and proceeded to spend from the federal treasury and hand money to his friends like he was a fratboy on vacation with daddy's credit card.

Only this time his Dad's Saudi "friends" failed to help us out.

The huge federal overspending by W means that the federal government gives less money to states to do their job, which is generally services for people. This has strained the treasuries of the states, in turn.

Any questions?

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You don't know how to take the main assertions and offer what you think are better, more objective claims of fact do you RJ? You don't know how to tie facts together in a narrative that can compels readers to agree with your view. Try it sometime. Your dismissive contradictions and negative characterizations just don't compel.

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if there were any facts presented in the OP, not simply knee-jerk (emphasis upon jerk) bashing of right-leaning policies (and of course, the requisite "it's all George W. Bush's fault, waaaaaah" tripe)

Thanks for playing, troll.

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Seriously RJ. Try to make an argument that counters mine by addressing specific points.

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.

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